Torment - Post-Funding Update #28

InXile entertainment is back with a new post-funding update for Torment: Tides of Numenera about Licensing Pillars of Eternity technology, Inventory, and Loot.

Pillars of Eternity Technology

I’m happy to say that we’ve taken things a step further and recently reached an agreement to license Obsidian’s technology for Pillars of Eternity to use in Torment. (In case you haven’t seen it yet, a great Pillars of Eternity teaser came out last month – they are still accepting late pledges for any who missed their Kickstarter.) Torment’s code base will thus include the most relevant components of PE’s technology and Wasteland 2’s. We’re making enhancements to best suit Torment, and some systems will of course be completely new as Torment’s design is its own.

Inventory

Your pack will be limited by encumbrance only—not by the number of items. The pack will look a lot like PST: a large number of slots where item icons will be displayed. The major difference is that when those slots are filled up, you’ll automatically get another "page" of inventory slots. You can even manually add pages to your party members’ inventory and use those new pages as an organizational tool, if you like. But you'll never be required to make pages—we want to make your inventory a useful tool, not a chore.

You're absolutely right, but note that inventory's limitation is not "weight" but "encumbrance," which we're using as a measure of unwieldiness. Encumbrance in Torment mostly means weight, but some items will have a higher or lower encumbrance measure because of their size (or, to be more precise, their density). For example, an ultra-light synthsteel breastplate might not weigh much, but it would have a significant encumbrance because it's so unwieldy. Conversely, a bar of gold weighs quite a lot, but because it's such a small object, its encumbrance would be less than a larger object of the same weight. In other words, encumbrance measures both the weight and the size (or unwieldiness) of items to determine the limit of what you can carry.

Loot

Inventory and Loot are interdependent, and one of our primary goals across both systems is to ensure that your decisions about what you will and will not carry are interesting ones. Specifically, the average player should be able to carry all the stuff she needs and still loot a single area without having to worry about her carry limit (though you might still run afoul of the cypher limit, which is a topic for another discussion).

The carry limit will matter when you need to decide what to sell and what to keep. It may also matter if you're hoarding things, but in Torment, you won't be carting 100 mundane short swords back and forth just to make a few extra shins (verisimilitude is important, but we're not sure it's that important). Loot should always be interesting and usable.

Sounds amazing honestly. I liked the part about having extra slots to equip things and the scavenging for loot, as well as the idea of crafting these pieces together to make something very unique and interesting. Awesome!

So after years of lurking, I've finally managed to make an account and this is my first post. I think the inventory system is sound and well thought out, but in my opinion this really isn't a part of gameplay that fascinates most people, nor are they doing anything risky or disturbing, hence the lack of responses.

Of all upcoming RPGs I'm looking forward to this the most. Originally I was much more interested in Eternity, but that seems to feel more "generic" with every update whereas Torment is really pushing some boundaries of the genre and adding much appreciated complexity.

Originally Posted by forgottenlor
So after years of lurking, I've finally managed to make an account and this is my first post. I think the inventory system is sound and well thought out, but in my opinion this really isn't a part of gameplay that fascinates most people, nor are they doing anything risky or disturbing, hence the lack of responses.

Welcome to the community-!
At least you figured out how to put an avatart the first time! I am still working on that one!

Encumbrance remains a bit of an odd concept. About the closest I could come to a physical interpretation was as a measure of the typical moment of inertia, which determines how hard it is to change the rate of rotation of an object. If you're spinning around in combat, then your MoI is a significant factor in how well you can maneuver.

Originally Posted by rjshae
Encumbrance remains a bit of an odd concept. About the closest I could come to a physical interpretation was as a measure of the typical moment of inertia, which determines how hard it is to change the rate of rotation of an object. If you're spinning around in combat, then your MoI is a significant factor in how well you can maneuver.

I think it's always been an issue where the rules are best accepted, and then forgotten about, in RPGs. In real life, soldiers may be carrying 100 pounds of gear, but when they're actually tactical, the packs are not on their backs, they are on the ground, and probably not even nearby. Troops doing dungeon delving, for instance, would set up a little base camp and send out one or more patrol to do the "exploring". Once they had everything covered that was in easy range of their base camp, they'd move their base camp forward, and start the whole process over again. On patrol, they'd be carrying only what they need. Weapons, food, ammo, 1st aid kit, maybe a poncho to use as blanket. That kind of thing. Of course, this isn't practical to replicate in a game, so they don't do it.

As far as "encumbrance", the biggest issue besides the actual weight of the load is how the load is positioned. Anything that changes your center of gravity is going to make movement awkward and unnatural. Especially if it's up high, like a pack. Put a heavy enough pack on and try to stand up straight, you'll fall over backwards. Try to run and you'll find yourself practically on all fours trying to keep that pack balanced without being shoved face first into the ground by the weight. Of course, a pack has to be pretty heavy before the issue becomes so acute, though

EDIT: Forgot to mention that while I've been trying really hard not to get my hopes up for these big ticket kickstarters, this is looking really good!